NEW YORK \u2014 Screenwriter Philippa Boyens gets a tired look in her eyes when she recalls the surgery required to turn \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d into a movie, even a sprawling trilogy of three-hour movies.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so hard,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard, it\u2019s hard, oh God, it\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
One agonizing cut in the screenplay removed a glimpse of the myth behind J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s 500,000-word epic. In this lost scene, the traitor Saruman is torturing the noble Gandalf. \u201cWhat,\u201d asks the evil wizard, \u201cis the greatest power?\u201d Gandalf replies, \u201cLife.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYou fool,\u201d says Saruman. \u201cLife can be destroyed. Did I teach you nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Trying again, Gandalf says, \u201cCreation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYes,\u201d answers Saruman, \u201cthe power to create life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Millions of readers and now moviegoers have seen \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d as an epic tale of good versus evil.<\/p>\n\n
Many have tried to pin labels on each side. The dark lord Sauron and his minions represent Nazi Germany and the armies of Middle Earth are England and its allies. Wait, said scribes in the 1960s. The forces of evil were industrialists who wanted to enslave Tolkien\u2019s peaceful, tree-hugging elves and Hobbits. The dark lord\u2019s \u201cOne Ring to rule them all\u201d was the atomic bomb, or nuclear power, or something else nasty and modern.<\/p>\n\n
The reality is more complex than that, said Boyens, after a press screening of \u201cThe Two Towers.\u201d Director Peter Jackson\u2019s second \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d reaches theaters on Dec. 18.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThis is not a story about good versus evil,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about that goodness and that evilness that is in all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Anyone who studies Tolkien, she said, quickly learns that the Oxford don rejected allegorical interpretations of his work.<\/p>\n\n
Nevertheless, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his goal was to create a true myth that offered the modern world another chance to understand the timeless roots of sin. Thus, even his darkest characters have mixed motives or have been shaped by past choices between good and evil. Even his virtuous heroes wrestle with temptations to do evil or to do good for the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n\n
The dark lord Sauron, noted Boyens, \u201cwas your basic fallen angel. If you go back even further within this mythology, you have a world that begins with Iluvatar, who is the One, who is basically God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Iluvatar created the world through music, noted Boyens. But one angel, Melkor, was \u201cjealous of the power of creation\u201d and struck a note of discord, shattering the harmony. Yet Iluvatar did not destroy his creation. Instead, he gave his creatures the freedom to make choices between darkness and light, between evil and mercy.<\/p>\n\n
It is hard to put this level of complexity on a movie screen. Nevertheless, Boyens and Jackson stressed that the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d team tried to leave the foundations of Tolkien\u2019s myth intact. The ultimate war between good and evil is inside the human heart.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t make it as a spiritual film, but here is what we did do,\u201d said Jackson, who is a co-writer and co-producer as well as the director of the project. \u201cTolkien was a very religious man. But we made a decision a long time ago that we would never knowingly put any of our own baggage into these films. \u2026<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWhat we tried to do was honor the things that were important to Tolkien, but without really emphasizing one thing over another. We didn\u2019t want to make it a religious film. But he was very religious and some of the messages and some of the themes are based on his beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The goal is to retain the timeless quality of the books, said Jackson.<\/p>\n\n
Most of the filming for this three-movie project was done before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he noted. The director had no way to know his movies would reach theaters during such tense times. Once again, many want to match headlines with events in Tolkien\u2019s masterwork.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYou sort of get the impression \u2014 which can be depressing \u2014 that Tolkien\u2019s themes really resonate today and that they\u2019re probably going to resonate in 50 years and then in 100 years,\u201d said Jackson. \u201cI don\u2019t think humans are capable of actually pulling themselves out of these basic ruts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK \u2014 Screenwriter Philippa Boyens gets a tired look in her eyes when she recalls the surgery required to turn \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d into a movie, even a sprawling trilogy of three-hour movies. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard, it\u2019s hard, oh God, it\u2019s hard.\u201d One agonizing cut in the screenplay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[343,431,1542,870],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-evil","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-tolkien"],"yoast_head":"\n